The Paradise Trees

by Linda Huber

  And even if Plan A went wrong for some reason, well, he could go straight to Plan B, couldn’t he? What a genius he was. Yes, he could relax now, it was all going to be fine.

  Sunday... Sunday morning, in fact, how very fitting... A long walk for old Bob, and Paradise for little Helen.

  Alicia

  ‘Bath time,’ said Alicia, looking thankfully at her watch. ‘Come on, Jenny-penny, you can be in the bath while I’m helping Grandpa into his pjs.’

  And that way she wouldn’t be alone with him, not really, she could chat to Jen in the bath all the time. It was horrible the way her skin crawled whenever she had to touch her father. He was pretty spaced out most of the time. He would get up from his chair and go for a wander, he would lift things up and put them down in different places, but there was obviously no thought process going on behind the actions. And other, appropriate actions often just didn’t happen – she had to hold his food to his mouth and wipe away the dribble, not to mention having to take him to the bathroom every couple of hours. It was enough having messy sheets to contend with every morning. But it all meant she had to touch him, trying all the time to control herself so that Jenny wouldn’t see the shudders... Christ. Was she just a hateful person, or was her body remembering something her mind had made itself forget?

  It took the bribe of a double portion of bubble bath, but eventually Jenny left Moritz in the kitchen and followed on upstairs.

  ‘Pooh, it’s a bit stinky in here, isn’t it?’ she said, standing in her grandfather’s doorway. ‘Poor old Grandpa.’

  Alicia was silent for a moment. How to make your mother feel ashamed in three short words. Trust Jenny to have the empathy to think ‘poor old Grandpa’ and not ‘disgusting old Grandpa’. Maybe her daughter was a nicer person than she was. After all, he was a sick old man now, was she building something in her imagination here, something that hadn’t happened? The whole child’s voice in her head could be a sign of her own insecurity and not her father’s ‘abuse’.

  No. Alicia stood still, frantically trying to think. He had been abusive. She’d been a victim, but like a lot of other victims she had pushed it away. Buried it somewhere, deep down. That happened all the time, according to the news reports.

  Unfortunately it was true that the room was smelly. Her father had woken up doubly incontinent almost every day that week, and no matter how long the window was open for, there was still a residual aroma that wasn’t pleasant.

  The old man sat down on the bed, then looked straight at Jenny and laughed his wheezy laugh.

  ‘Did he understand what I said?’ said Jenny, looking from Bob to Alicia and frowning uncertainly.

  Alicia shrugged, barely managing to hide how shocked she was. ‘I don’t know, Jen. I don’t think so, don’t worry.’

  But maybe he had understood. It was the first time he’d reacted to Jen since they’d arrived here. Was it possible that he was using what little sense he had just to be nasty? And maybe he had more sense than they knew about. One thing was clear, from now on she was going to make very sure that Jen was never alone with him. Not that he could physically harm her in his current state, but he might frighten her, and that alone would be intolerable.

  The frown on Jenny’s face disappeared as soon as she was in the bath, and Alicia kept up an amusing cat conversation while she was sponging her father’s hands and face in the bedroom.

  The phone rang while she was buttoning his pyjama top. Hell, she should leave it... but if it was Margaret she would worry if nobody answered at this time of day.

  Warning Jenny to be careful, Alicia dived downstairs. The communication system in this house was antiquated to say the least. No internet, and the one and only phone had been old-fashioned in the seventies. Add to that the precarious mobile reception and you could almost believe that The Beatles were still on Top of the Pops.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Alicia, it’s Frank. How’s things?’

  ‘Oh, Frank! Thanks for calling.’ He was being very supportive, thought Alicia, stretching the phone cord to the limit so that she could keep an eye on the upstairs landing. He’d called nearly every day to check how things were, or to give her an update on the empty bed situation at St. Joe’s. After two deaths earlier in the week there would be room for her father any time, and Alicia knew she didn’t want to lose the place for him. They had to make Margaret agree, and soon.

  ‘We’re okay, I guess. I’m going to reduce the new pills to just the one tablet, he slept all night but he was in a real mess again this morning.’ She squatted sideways on the bottom step, wincing. She was stiff, as she and Jen had spent every spare moment for the past two days trying to tame the front garden. There wasn’t much else they could do here with her father to look after, and she was discovering muscles she’d never known she had.

  ‘Okay. Give him one tablet for the next three nights, and if that doesn’t work out then we’ll have another think. You know yourself it can take a bit of trial and error.’

  The splashing noises from above had stopped, and Alicia frowned. Time to check that her daughter wasn’t treating herself to one of Margaret’s expensive face packs.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go, Jen’s in the bath and my father is half into his pyjamas. It’s like having two kids.’

  ‘Oh, I’d forgotten Margaret’s away. I was going to ask if you’d like to come to the pub for an hour or two but I guess you can’t.’

  His voice was disappointed, and Alicia grinned, secretly pleased that Frank wanted to spend time with her.

  ‘I’d love to, another time,’ she said. ‘Thanks Frank. I’ll see you soon.’

  Upstairs, she settled her father for the night then played bubbles with Jenny, happier in herself than she’d been since arriving back in her hometown. Frank was a good friend to have, he would help her convince Margaret about St. Joe’s. And in a week or so, Sonja would be here with her family, and that would be great for Jen too. Then with her father in the home she could leave Lower Banford and all the dark memories safely behind her, see a therapist of some kind about her childhood and lay the ghosts to rest. It would be so good to be back in her own place again. Though mind you, she was actually getting a whole lot more opportunities for socialising here than she did in bustling Bedford. In the space of just two days, two men had asked her out. Maybe it hadn’t been such a bad idea, spending the summer in her father’s house.

  Chapter Ten

  Sunday, 16th July

  Alicia

  Sunday morning seemed almost idyllic at first, with her father still asleep and just Alicia and Jenny at the breakfast table.

  Church bells for the early service were bim-bamming in through the open window as they sat in the kitchen with the usual Sunday morning bacon and eggs, chatting about how Moritz was going to like town life. Jenny was being enthusiastic, and Alicia was managing to ignore the fact that her daughter was sneaking bits of bacon down to the little cat crouched beneath her chair. Conker, as usual when meat of any kind was on the menu, had been banished to the garden and was whining from behind the back door. His nose must be thoroughly out of joint, thought Alicia, smiling to herself. Jen had spent most of her time since Thursday inside playing with Moritz, who was both more agile and funnier than poor Conker, a typical climbing-the-curtains kitten, in fact, and naturally Jen loved that. But maybe the great outdoors would beckon again; after three days of showers, today was sunny and dry. Her daughter’s next words confirmed this.

  ‘Can we have a picnic lunch in the woods afterwards?’ asked Jenny, letting Moritz lick her fingers clean. Alicia poured her a glass of milk.

  ‘You wash those hands before you do another thing, my lamb,’ she said. A picnic lunch with her father in tow... no way. She smiled her persuasive best at Jenny and continued cautiously.

  ‘Well, we could have a picnic in the garden if you like, but we can’t really take Grandpa to the woods.’

  Jenny’s face fell. ‘I wanted to show you my speci
al place now the sun’s shining.’

  Alicia sighed. Poor scrap, it was a sad day when a simple request like a picnic had to be refused. What Jen needed here was a friend of the two-legged variety. There must be other eight-year-old girls in the village? They could ask Frank, he would know.

  ‘And I’m dying to see it, it sounds brilliant,’ she said, pouring herself another coffee. ‘But not with Grandpa. Tell you what. I’ll make you and Conker a picnic for today. Then when Aunt Margaret gets back, you and me’ll have a real day out somewhere – woods, river, swimming pool – whatever you like. You can plan it. Scoot and do your teeth now and I’ll make you some peanut butter sandwiches.’

  ‘Yum,’ said Jenny, and raced back upstairs with Moritz under her arm. Alicia followed on. Better get her father up before he messed the bed again. He was agitated and uncooperative today, but at least he was clean and dry. She was settling him into his chair in the living room when Jenny called from upstairs.

  ‘Mummy! I can’t find Moritz!’

  Alicia’s lips twitched. ‘Find Moritz’ was probably going to be the most-played game that summer. She ran upstairs to help before Jenny became frantic. There were only the four bedrooms, but Moritz seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. It was ten minutes at least before they discovered him crouched behind the bin in the bathroom.

  ‘Bad kitty!’ Jenny scooped him up and covered him with kisses.

  Alicia laughed. ‘He’s been running around avoiding us all this time. Let’s get him a collar with a bell on it,’ she said, scratching Moritz’s ears. He was cute. ‘Take him downstairs, lovey. I’ll just air the rooms while I’m up here.’

  She fluffed up pillows and opened windows, listening as Jenny bossed Conker around in the kitchen. Alicia sighed. What was going to happen there? Would Margaret still want a creature like Conker if – when – she wasn’t living here anymore? A sudden vision of Conker’s large, ungainly form in her own compact two bedroom flat made Alicia shudder, then smile. And now she’d better grill some bacon for her father’s roll.

  She made Jenny’s sandwiches while the bacon was grilling, and waved as the little girl and the big dog loped off together down the garden. Right, breakfast was ready. Carefully, she lifted the loaded tray.

  ‘Here we are at last,’ she said, edging round the living room door.

  The room was empty. Alicia stood there stupidly.

  ‘Where are you?’

  Not in here, anyway, so much was clear, there was no place in this room where a grown man could hide even if he’d wanted to. Alicia glanced up and down the hallway.

  ‘Hello? Bob? Breakfast!’ But of course there was no reply. Had he gone back upstairs while she was in the kitchen? She raced up, but the bedrooms were all deserted. Shit, where on earth had he gone?

  The Stranger

  It had been child’s play. And how very gratifying it was too, the way everything worked out straightaway like that. An omen of what was to come, perhaps? He had thought the whole thing through very carefully before setting out. If either of the Helens noticed him he would say that he had just popped by in passing to see how they were managing, alone with old Bob. Big Helen wouldn’t have suspected a thing.

  He’d jogged through the woods, in case by some miracle little Helen had been at the special place already, and then right up Bob Logan’s wilderness of a garden to the back door. The dog was lying in a dejected heap by the step, but it hadn’t barked or growled at him today. Not much of a watchdog, then. Good.

  He could see through the window that the kitchen was deserted, so he’d let himself in and stood listening. His Helens were talking upstairs, so he crossed the kitchen and stuck his head into the living room.

  And there he was in his chair, old Bob, sucking his teeth and staring at nothing at all. Quickly, he’d grasped the old man’s hand and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Come on, Bob. A lovely walk.’

  And the old man had followed him outside like a stupid sheep. This was the dangerous bit, if anyone saw them now the plan would be ruined before it even started. He could say he’d found the old man outside, of course, but that would be the end of Plan A. Fortunately the place wasn’t overlooked, all those overgrown shrubs and bushes saw to that.

  He led the old man round to the front, crossed the lane with him and gave him a shove along the pathway which led down to the river. And Old Bob had trotted off towards the sound of the Ban rushing along to the weir at Middle Banford. It sounded as if it was carrying a lot of water today, all that rain had at least been good for something. As soon as the old man was out of sight he jogged off down the lane.

  Well, the plan had started perfectly. Worst case, the old man would be found too soon. Then it would be time for Plan B. Best case, big Helen would have so much to do looking for or after Daddy that she wouldn’t even notice how long little Helen had been gone in the woods...

  Alicia

  ‘Bob!’

  Panic rising inside her, Alicia raced back down to the kitchen and yanked the back door open. No-one. Quickly, she stepped up on the bench by the back door and glared down the garden, but again, no-one in sight. And the driveway was equally deserted.

  ‘Jenny! Jen! Come quick!’ There was no point calling after her father, he wouldn’t answer even if he was there and he certainly wouldn’t come running to see what she wanted.

  Jenny, thankfully, was still nearby, and rushed back, hair flying.

  ‘Grandpa’s gone – have you seen him – where were you exactly?’

  ‘In the summerhouse. Grandpa’s gone? Where Mummy?’

  ‘I’ve no idea but we have to find him. Take Conker and go up the lane as far as Mrs Watson’s. Knock on everyone’s door on the way and ask if they’ve seen him, maybe he’s in one of the gardens. I’ll drive round the village. He must have gone out when we weren’t watching him.’

  And she hadn’t watched him a lot that morning. Guilt welled up inside Alicia. Looking for Moritz, airing the beds, making sandwiches - she hadn’t taken proper care of her father. But then he’d never wandered away before.

  Jenny dashed off and Alicia flung herself into the car. Oh God, where was he? How could she not have noticed him leave the house? She should have kept the doors locked, she of all people should have realised something like this could happen... It was one thing wishing him gone, but quite another when he actually was gone and she was to blame.

  The village was empty. Sunday morning peace and quiet reigned, the villagers were evidently either still in bed or enjoying leisurely Sunday breakfasts. Alicia drove up and down the main street, peering up lanes and into gardens, realising that it was a hopeless task. She would have to go home and phone the police. Her father could be wandering round someone’s back garden and she would never see him from the car. Her heart still thumping under her ribs, she pulled the car round.

  Jenny and Conker were trotting back down the lane, the little girl’s hand clutching the dog’s thick collar. Alicia jerked the car to a halt.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘No, but Mr Watson and Mr and Mrs Campbell are out looking in all the gardens and Mr and Mrs Donovan have gone down to the river. Mummy, where is he?’

  ‘Darling, I don’t know. I’ll have to phone the police.’

  Tears welled up in Jenny’s eyes and Alicia put one arm round her while she phoned, conscious that her voice as well as her hands were shaking. It was twenty minutes before the police arrived, two uniformed officers from Upper Banford. By this time the village was beginning to gather that old Bob Logan was missing, and quite a search party was forming on the front driveway. The police sergeant listened to Alicia’s explanation, and bent over a map of the area with his colleague.

  Alicia looked at the people milling around in front of the house. How kind everyone was, coming to search like this. She didn’t even know most of them. Oh, she should phone Frank, he would want to help too – and Doug Patton? – but he had said he usually worked weekends. She dialled Frank’s numb
er.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said, when she explained, barely able to keep the tears back. This was all her fault. Where was he? The strokes hadn’t affected his leg function much at all, a slight limp, a stumbling gait, that was all... he could be a long way away by this time.

  The police were organising the villagers into groups to search the woods, the river pathway, and the village. Alicia stood cuddling Jenny by the front door, apprehension twisting her insides into knots. Frank jogged up the driveway, his face concerned.

  ‘Doctor Carter, good,’ said the sergeant, sending the woods group round the back of the house. ‘You should go with the river group, if you don’t mind, in case... ahm. You stay here and wait, Mrs Bryson. He might well come back on his own and then it’s best if you’re here for him just as usual.’

  Alicia nodded. Her mouth was dry. Why was she feeling this way about a parent she didn’t even care about? Was it guilt that all these people were out searching just because she hadn’t looked after her father?

  Frank put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed briefly. ‘Try not to worry, Alicia, we’ll find him.’

  She watched as the river group left the front drive. Be here for him just as usual, the sergeant had said. But there was nothing usual about her being here. She winced. Was that why her father had wandered off? To look for Margaret? And if he had gone down to the river... She knew his life would end one day soon, but dear God, not like this. If he died today it would all be down to her. A dry sob rose in her throat, and Conker whined in sympathy beside her.

  ‘Come on, Mummy. Doctor Frank said it would be okay,’ said Jenny, pulling her arm. ‘Let’s get Grandpa’s bed ready for him.’

  Now her eight-year-old daughter was taking charge. Alicia swallowed hard. ‘Thanks, love,’ she whispered, following Jenny upstairs. She smoothed the duvet out over her father’s bed, then remembered the hot water bottle in the bathroom. Warmth, he would need warmth. She filled it and placed it on the bed, then stood there stupidly, staring at the dark red rubber bottle against the white sheet.